[justpeter]

I've been buying gold and silver for about 9 or 10 years now after being a subscriber to Bob Chapman's newsletters. In that time gold has about quadrupled in value.

For the last couple of years I've been selling some of my gold because I needed the money, so it's been a great investment for me.

I know a company in the UK that pays about 95% of the spot price for scrap gold but I don't know if it's ok to advertise them here. Anyway, it just seems to me that there's a lot of guff talked about gold so I thought I'd share some of my experience with it.

I've bought most of my gold on ebay although I did buy some krugerrands from a dealer some years ago at about 10% above spot price. I'm sure I don't need to point out that buying gold from a high street store isn't a good idea in terms of investment. You'll pay about 10 times its real value so you'll never get your money back.

I've bought gold coins such as sovereigns on ebay at spot price or less. I've also bought various gold items if they were a bargain - rings, ingots etc. It's all a matter of spending time to get to know what's available but obviously I wouldn't buy gold from a foreign country and I would make sure I knew what I was buying was genuine. In 9 or 10 years of buying gold and silver on ebay I've never been ripped-off. Never.

Many sellers of gold and silver on ebay don't have a clue. They will advertise their item without saying how much it weighs, so obviously you don't know what it's worth and neither do they. Most buyers ignore these items but I will ask the seller to tell me the weight. Many times I'm the only potential buyer who knows what the item is worth and I can get a real bargain. The seller is happy with the price they get and I'm happy to pay it. The bargain I get is my reward for having spent the time and effort to get to know the marketplace.

The same principles apply to silver. There are lots of silver items on ebay - coins, ingots, medallions, cigarette cases etc etc. I pretty much know this market inside out and back to front but it's getting harder to find a bargain these days as people seem to be more aware of the value of gold and silver these days.

Yes, it would be nice to live in a world where money didn't matter and we could spend our time on more spiritually useful matters than making money but until we get there I think it may be wise to have a bit of gold and/or silver in case we need it. As I said, I've already found it to be useful to me.